Owen played freshman football, which started in June... and finished up the last week of October. They won 3 and lost 3 games. A couple of the games got cancelled and one was changed to a JV game so it conflicted with his choir concert. Owen trained during practices to play quarterback but never got a chance to try it in a game. He played linebacker and various other spots, including punter. He got to be #10, which is what number Papa was when he played (at least one of Papa's seasons - not sure if he wore other numbers). Owen enjoyed playing with his friend Ollie, who he has been friends with since elementary school. He really liked his coach too. Owen worked hard. Practices were long and tough, but he enjoyed playing. It was good for Owen to try out something new this year.
Papa
Savannah is still enjoying hip hop. She did a Beetlejuice dance for the fall performance. She got to do a "trust fall" for part of the dance. It was interesting doing her make-up for this one!
Jared finished his senior year season of cross country. He made a lot of progress since last year when his goal was to break 18 minutes for 3 miles. He beat that goal during his time trial at the start of the season, with a 17:27. So then his new goal for the season was to break 17 minutes. He did that during his 3rd race, with a personal record of 16:38. Following that, he hoped to break 16:30, but didn't quite get there. All of his times were less than 17:37, which was the hilly race. He had hoped to get a new PR on the flat course for the last race but didn't quite get there (17:05). The team also didn't qualify for CIF, not being able to beat the one team standing in their way. They had beat that team by 1 point in a previous meet, which was really exciting, but then that team did really well on the flat race course during the last qualifying meet. The ending was a little disappointing, but Jared had a great season and worked hard. Just for perspective, his PR's for sophomore and junior years were 18:48 and 18:13. Freshman year was a Covid year, so they didn't race. He dropped over 2 minutes from his PR from 10th grade to senior year. Jared got invited to an award's luncheon one day, although he wasn't chosen for athlete of the week. It was an honor to be selected to go though.
He got a Captain Award and also received the one unique award for sportsmanship and character. His name was put on a plaque to be displayed at school for that special award. Jared made awards for the coaches, by spray painting his own racing shoes gold and mounting them on a plaque with their names. The funny thing about that is Jared got the assistant coach's first name wrong. They call the coach by his last name, and Jared thought he knew the first name, but it turns out it wasn't quite right! He did later fix the name plate, but he was pretty embarrassed about it. Jared also gave a speech at the awards banquet and also at an earlier team banquet, which was very touching. He is a great leader and inspiration for his teammates. He really liked his 2 coaches as well, and they thought very highly of him.
One thing that I did was run in a meet this season! At one of the local meets, they offered a coaches and community race. I decided the morning of that I would try to run it. Owen ran with me at the last minute as well, to support me and cheer me on. I needed it, because it was SO hard to run in the heat of the day and a hilly course. I had no idea how hard it would be. I've been running 5.5 miles one morning a week (along with other 1-3.5 mile days), and I can run 5.5 in about 48-49 minutes, so I was expecting to run an 8:30 pace for the 3 miles. However, by noon that day, it was pretty hot and I wasn't prepared for hills. I ran it in 29:19, which was pathetic. I guess it's been 28 years since my last cross country race in high school (which was 2 miles)...but I should have done better. I was the slow mom out there, struggling to finish. I'm a better fan these days than participant. I did make it to all 7 of his races, so it was fun to cheer him on.
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